Overland, there’s shorter time to dream

Represented By Latitude28

Migration, often seen as movement from place of birth to a foreign destination, is a measure of global
bilateral flows. The country of destination becomes the migrant’s new refuge. We speak to the migrant in soft
whispers to say, You are welcome, we accept you in your alien. Perhaps, another – the other – but with warmth
of our arms, you are invited to rest. We ask them, Who did you come with and who did you leave behind? Did
anyone come ahead of you? Where do you find strength? Do you carry an anthem under your breath? Does
the water seem safer than land? Have you brought along pocketed pickles, bonafides, grains, warrants,
dreams?

Lur Alghurabi in her finely crafted essay, ‘You Either Die a Refugee or Live Long Enough to See Yourself
Become the Diaspora Writer’ writes “We are a family of survivors. That’s the price of staying alive. We have lived
to tell the tale or loved through another one. We lived to see how much candy we could fit into our mouths, each
piece growing stiff and hard like rocks until the insides of our cheeks erupted with blood. We have lost feeling, but

not enough to forget that we are grieving. What emptiness”.
‘Overland, there is shorter time to dream’ is a group exhibition that is borne from a need to empathise with
the various shifts in tongue, body, land, traits, space, frames and scapes that happen as a result of migration.
There is a need to examine the intersections that distort language as a means of prolonged exile, the fissures
and fault lines that serve as birthing sites for war, violence of socio-political unrest, processes/processing of
the disparaged, a demand for silence, an adoption of surveillance and a homesickness, a constant yearning
that comes along with. The exhibition came to fruition because, of an ache to define the peripheries of home
being a third-culture child, as well as a constant inclination to study narratives of diasporas associated with
the act of deracination.

“no one leaves home, unless home is the mouth of a shark.” — Warsan Shire

‘Overland, there is shorter time to dream’ is a presentation incurred as a result of sustained research on
migratory practices and an inquiry of subsidiary motives, rituals, aftermath, consequences in and around
resettlement. The exhibition is curated by Shristi Sainani.